


accessories to murder

by akisazame, jessalae



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Beast (The Magicians), Blow Jobs, Coming Out, Dirty Talk, Eliot Waugh's Canonically Huge Dick, Fantasizing, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Quentin Coldwater's Canonical Oral Fixation, Sexually Experienced Quentin Coldwater, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27155975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/pseuds/jessalae
Summary: Quentin looks up at him thoughtfully, then kind of half-smiles. "You're the fashion expert, though," he says. "What do you think?"Eliot schools his face into a calm, considering expression that belies the absolute furor of hormones and panic in his brain. Finally, he says, "It suits you."
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 35
Kudos: 307





	accessories to murder

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [hoko_onchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/) for the beta, and [fishydwarrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishydwarrows) for the art!

The first step of Eliot's long, slow descent into absolute madness happens when he spots Quentin curled up in the window seat of the common room, textbook open on his knees in front of him, chewing on the end of his pencil as he takes notes — and Quentin glances up at him briefly and smiles, then goes back to reading, and Eliot's heart nearly stops.

"Quentin," he says, trying to sound idly curious. "Are you wearing _eyeliner_?"

Quentin looks up at him again, and no, Eliot's eyes are not deceiving him; his fantasies haven't begun to leak out of their little compartment in his brain. Quentin's definitely wearing eyeliner. "Yeah," he says. "It's enchanted. I got it from Kady, it's supposed to like, help me see in the dark? So I don't get such bad headaches from reading when the light isn't good."

Eliot allows himself to move two steps closer. Only two. "You could also try turning on the light," he points out.

Quentin rolls his eyes. The gesture is even more infuriating now, enhanced as it is by the hint of brown along his lash line. "Yeah, I know that. But I dunno." He shrugs. "I kind of like it, actually."

Eliot swallows back something horrendous like _I like it too,_ or _it looks ravishing on you,_ or _let us adjourn to my bedroom immediately so I can gaze into your perfectly lined eyes while gently railing you, you know, in a friend way._ Quentin looks up at him thoughtfully, then kind of half-smiles. "You're the fashion expert, though," he says. "What do you think?"

Eliot schools his face into a calm, considering expression that belies the absolute furor of hormones and panic in his brain. Finally, he says, "It suits you. I think the brown's a good choice, black would be too harsh for your whole normcore aesthetic."

Quentin's smile grows just a little more. Eliot needs to get himself out of this conversation right the fuck now. "Oh, um, the black would be a much more powerful darkvision. Like, for caves and stuff, I guess? Kady had a whole list from her supplier or whatever. Purple is for farsight, which sounds really fucking cool, actually."

Eliot is abruptly glad that he's not carrying his customary drink, because he would have fucking choked on it. "Is that so?" he manages, still sort of sounding like he's choking even without outside liquid assistance. "I might have to hit Kady up, get a look at this list."

"Mmmhmm," Quentin agrees, attention back on his book. Eliot turns to go, to head up to his room to think wholly inappropriate thoughts about Quentin in purple eyeliner, but he pulls up short when Quentin adds, nonchalant, "I think green was x-ray vision?"

"Intriguing," Eliot says, in something at least mildly approaching a normal tone of voice. He can feel his composure slipping further away with every passing second. "Well, if you don't mind, I'll just— leave you to it?"

He's lucky: he makes it all the way to his room before he's overwhelmed by thoughts of Quentin's big brown eyes lined in dark green, looking him up and down, smiling that little half-smile and snapping Eliot's last overburdened thread of self-control neatly in two.

* * *

Quentin keeps wearing the eyeliner every day for the next week, then suddenly just— stops. The memory of the delicate shadows emphasizing Quentin's big brown eyes continues to haunt Eliot, the threat constantly looming like a particularly sexy ghost, but once another week has passed and the eyeliner has not made a reappearance, he tucks those mental images safely away in his extensive catalog of fantasies about boys he can never have, volume Q for Quentin Coldwater, chapter His Stupid Beautiful Face, subsection Eyes.

And then, a couple of nights later, there's a knock on his bedroom door, that tentative little _tap-tap?_ that Eliot recognizes so well by now. He sits up — Margo grumbles at him from where she's half-asleep against his chest, not even really paying attention to the movie playing on Eliot's contraband laptop — and does a short series of tuts to unlock and open his door. "What's up, Q?" he asks as the door swings open.

Quentin looks a little surprised that Eliot knows it's him, even though it's far from the first time that Eliot has greeted him this way. "Hey," he says, then his eyes flash to Margo and he lowers his voice to a whisper. "Oh, sorry, uh— I can ask in the morning—"

"Nonsense," Eliot says, crooking a finger to beckon Quentin closer. "Bambi's just napping in preparation for her midnight second wind. She'll get her real sleep tomorrow in Intro to Meta-Comp."

Quentin steps tentatively into the room and brushes his hair back behind his ear, looking down at the sheaf of papers he's holding. "I'm trying to get this localized weather spell to work, and it's just not— I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I know you're way better at Russian than I am, so I thought maybe you could check my transliteration—"

Eliot doesn't hear a single word of his question. Eliot can't hear anything but his own pounding heartbeat, loud enough that he's certain it will wake Margo at any second. "Quentin," he says evenly. (He thinks he says it evenly. He prays he says it evenly.) "What are you wearing?"

Quentin looks down at himself: black jeans, black t-shirt, plaid flannel shirt over the top of it. "My normal clothes?" He frowns at Eliot, then realizes where Eliot's eyes are fixed. "Oh, that." He brings one hand to the base of his neck, touches the smooth black leather of the— choker? Necklace? _Collar?_ Whatever it is, it's currently ruining Eliot's life. "I get really bad colds this time of year — like, they knock me out for like a week at a time, it's bad, you do _not_ want to be around me." His thumb slides along the thin strip of leather to the small green stone in the center of the choker. "I could feel myself coming down with one the other day so I asked the Infirmary if they had any, like, flu shot charms. And they gave me this."

"They gave you _that,_ " Eliot repeats, as though saying it himself will somehow make the situation less injurious to his own delicate sensibilities. He's pretty sure that the infirmary shouldn't deal in remedies that will actively murder innocent bystanders. "And that's... working for you?" Because it's _definitely_ working for Eliot.

"Well, I haven't gotten sick yet," Quentin says, his innocent smile like a scalpel between Eliot's ribs as he knocks dutifully on the wood of Eliot's bedside table. "It could just be a coincidence, I guess. It's kind of a bummer, you know? All the things that magic _can't_ actually do."

The sweet smile is slipping off Quentin's face, and Eliot can't have _that,_ so the words tumble out of his mouth before he's really thought them through, or had a thought at all other than _Stupid Sexy Quentin is not allowed to be sad._ "Magic or no, it's quite a fashion statement."

And Quentin _frowns,_ not in the sad way that he seemed to be heading towards, but in his pouty adult baby sort of way. "I'm not sure how I should take that."

"You should take it in the spirit which it was intended," Eliot says, trying very hard to sound lofty and unaffected when he is, in fact, deeply affected by bratty Quentin wearing a fucking collar. "It looks good on you. That's all I meant." _Just like the eyeliner,_ he almost adds, before the combined mental image of Quentin-in-eyeliner and Quentin-in-a-collar conspire to knock him flat on his metaphorical ass. Jesus _fucking_ Christ.

"Oh," Quentin says, looking sheepishly at the floor. Eliot spares a moment in his mental breakdown to be offended that this stunning boy has been complimented so infrequently in his life that he still doesn't know how to react. "Well, if _you_ think so..."

"I do," Eliot says firmly, adding, "Green's a good color for you," because apparently his dick has entirely taken over control of his brain.

Quentin rolls his eyes but he _smiles_ when he does it, and Eliot's mouth goes very dry. "Sure. I mean— thanks." His face does a weird twisty grimace thing, and he steps closer and holds out his handful of papers. The light of Eliot's bedside lamp gleams off the green stone resting in the hollow of Quentin's throat, against his soft skin, a few inches away from his pulse point, his collarbone— 

Margo levers herself up and snatches the papers out of Quentin's hand, looks at them through a curtain of sleep-tousled hair. "You transposed a _dje_ and a _dze_ in the fourth word," she says. "And that's a _nje_ at the end of that first sentence, not a _lje_. Jesus, Coldwater, who taught you Cyrillic?"

"Um," Quentin says.

Margo sighs and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, lands lightly on her feet next to Quentin. Eliot shifts his knees subtly, because now that she's not draped over the front of his body, the flowing silk of his pajama pants and robe don't do anything at all to hide his burgeoning erection. "Come on, I'll walk you through this one," she tells Quentin, stretching.

"Are you sure?" Quentin asks, his eyes flashing from her to Eliot and back. "You were sleeping, I can just—"

"Welcome to my second wind," she says, smiling charmingly at Quentin, while Eliot wonders exactly how long she's been listening in on this sordid little scene. Quentin, for his part, looks like he's been cornered by a Cacodemon. "Plus, my pillow stopped being comfortable." She looks sidelong at Eliot, raising the eyebrow that Quentin can't see. "Something poking me in the ribs."

"Um," Quentin says again, as she breezes past him, snagging the collar of his flannel shirt in two fingers to drag him along.

"Come on, puppy, let's get your homework done and get you to bed," she says. "Leave Eliot to have some quality alone time."

Quentin looks back over his shoulder at Eliot as they leave the room, grinning sheepishly right before Margo pulls him out of view. Eliot smiles weakly back at him— and then, as soon as they're out of earshot, waves his hand to slam the door shut.

* * *

"If you don't stop making that face, I'm calling animal control on your ass," Margo says, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"What face?" Eliot asks, fully aware of what face she means. It's his _I'm thinking about Quentin Coldwater in a choker and eyeliner_ face, which he's been making for approximately fifty percent of his waking hours for the past week. The other fifty percent, of course, has been devoted to thinking about things he wants to _do_ to Quentin Coldwater while he is wearing said choker and eyeliner.

They're walking arm-in-arm across the Sea on the way back from Practical Applications for Second Year Physical Disciplines— or they were, until Margo wriggled her arm free so she could round on Eliot, stopping him in his tracks. "This pathetic puppy-wants-to-play face. Christ, you're getting to be worse than Coldwater. Just tell him you want to chain his collar to your bed and get it over with."

Now _that's_ an image. Eliot has to swallow hard to regain his composure. "I have _told you,_ Bambi, I'm—"

" _Not gonna go there,_ " Margo recites along with him, sing-song. " _Being his friend is too important,_ " she continues after Eliot's voice drops out." _Besides, he's probably straight._ I've been off-book on your script for weeks now, El. You really think a straight boy would agree to wear a magic choker instead of going to get a flu shot like a regular muggle?"

"He's a nerd," Eliot reasons, not especially reasonably. "There's probably a lot of things he'd do for the sake of magic." He spins Margo back around and grabs her hand so they can resume their journey home.

"I don't know, El," Margo says, leaning into his arm as they walk into the Cottage. "There's a _lot_ of different dark vision spells. And his eyeliner game was on point."

Eliot is halfway to crafting his witty retort when he's suddenly struck speechless. The subject of their conversation is in the common room, standing next to one of the built-in bookcases, reaching up towards a book on the top shelf instead of using the ladder like a normal person or pulling it down telekinetically like a magician. The motion has made Quentin's soft blue henley shirt ruck up in the back, exposing the smooth skin beneath, and running up the length of his spine is—

"The prosecution enters Exhibit C into evidence," Margo says, patting Eliot's arm before prancing up the stairs to her room.

"Hey, Margo," Quentin calls after her without turning around, stretching further on his stubby little legs and still not quite able to reach the book in question. Then he drops back down with a frustrated sigh, hiding the marks on his back from view. "Hey, El," he says, looking over his shoulder and softly smiling. "How was class?"

"When the fuck did you get a _tattoo?_ " Eliot blurts out.

Quentin has the fucking audacity to look _confused,_ then his face lights up, dimples making a deeply unwelcome appearance. Like Eliot didn't already have enough to deal with. "Oh, yeah! We were learning personal enhancement spells in PA. And this one—" He twists around, pulling up his shirt a couple of inches so Eliot can see the swirls of ink tracing up the center of his back. "It's, like, a strength spell, I guess? To help you lift stuff. Which is weird, you know, since you're not supposed to lift from your back?"

He keeps talking, but the words lose all meaning to Eliot, because Quentin's stupid ill-fitting Walmart jeans are hanging low on his hips, and Eliot's thoroughly absorbed in the inch of skin between the bottom swirl of that _fucking tattoo_ and Quentin's waistband. Is that a shadow, right there above the center belt loop, or is that his ass? Is Quentin _not wearing underwear_? How dare he make Eliot even consider that possibility in his delicate state.

"—have to help my dad move some boxes in his garage when I go home for Thanksgiving weekend, so I asked Julia to cast this on me. I could've done it on myself, but, you know, the angle's pretty bad and— El, are you okay?"

"Never better," Eliot squeaks. He's gripping hard on the bookshelf ladder, not certain he'll stay upright under his own power. "So, that's, what, temporary?" Please god let it be temporary.

"Yeah," Quentin says, and he sounds honest-to-god _sad_ about it. "It starts losing power and vibrancy after a couple of days, and it'll be gone after a week. But it's cool, right?" He drops the hem of his shirt, thank Christ, but then Quentin starts messing with his sleeves, shoving the fabric up to display his equally tattooed wrists. "These are more for stability. I think there's an anti-carpal tunnel charm, too, which will definitely come in handy around exam time."

"And those are just—" Eliot cuts himself off, clearing his throat in an attempt to sound less strangled. "Tattoos are the only option for that, huh?"

Quentin looks contemplative, which would be cute if he didn't still have his tattooed wrist on display, for god and everyone to see. "Well, no," he admits, pushing his hair back with his hand, which of course only exposes _more wrist._ "I think most people use bracelets, or cufflinks. I guess hair elastics would've worked too, now that I think about it, and I definitely have plenty of those. But I liked the look of the tattoos, you know?"

Eliot knows. Eliot knows all too fucking well. "It's always fun to experiment." Then, realizing what he just said, he scrambles to add, "With new looks, I mean."

Quentin snorts. "For you, maybe. I'm pretty much just." He gestures down the length of his body. Confusingly, he's making a scrunched-up face like the gesture is meant to imply _nothing much to see here_ instead of the much more accurate _I'm an absolute snack_. "Me, all the time."

Eliot wants to take him by his shoulders and— shake him. Or something. Until he stops with this self-deprecating bullshit and just admits that every inch of his body is incandescently gorgeous and an imminent threat to Eliot's life. His sleeves are pushed up unevenly, one all the way to the elbow, revealing a strong forearm covered in brown hair, a ring of black curlicues circling his wrist and winding its way up towards his elbow. The other sleeve has fallen back down most of the way to his wrist, and even _that_ is charming, the way he couldn't possibly be put together if he tried. He _is_ him, all the time, and that's the fucking _problem_. 

"Nothing wrong with being you," Eliot says, maybe a beat later than he really should have.

"Hm," Quentin says noncommittally. He looks at his wrist, traces one broad fingertip over the pattern of the tattoo. "Do you have any?" he asks suddenly. "Tattoos?"

 _WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND OUT??_ Eliot's one remaining brain cell screams over the sound of the rest of his useless brain meat sending up alarm bells like sixteen different fires have just spontaneously erupted in the vicinity. "No," his mouth says. Good call, mouth.

"You'd look good with a tattoo," Quentin says, like this is a reasonable thing for a straight boy to say to his actively pining gay friend. Then Quentin is stepping towards him, reaching for him, _touching his arm,_ turning it over so that Eliot's palm is facing up. Quentin traces his fingertips lightly over the skin of Eliot's forearm, right below the elbow where the sleeves of his button down are rolled up — _evenly,_ of course, he's not _uncivilized_ like _some people_ — then smiles up at him, all innocence. "Right here, maybe?"

Eliot flinches away, ripping his arm from Quentin's gentle hold and taking two quick steps back towards the stairs, trying to ignore the way his skin feels like there's sparks skittering across it. "I'll take that under advisement." Quentin frowns at him, and Eliot swallows hard and says, "Sorry. Ticklish."

"Oh, sorry," Quentin says. "Well. Anyway." He holds up his hands, splaying out his fingers. "If you need something heavy lifted in the next couple days, just let me know." Eliot's face contorts without his permission, and he's certain he's irrevocably given himself away until Quentin adds, "Yeah, I guess that's a dumb favor to offer someone who's telekinetic, huh?"

"You never know," Eliot says faintly. And then, because he actually can't resist showing off, he curls his fingers, and the book Quentin was reaching for a minute ago floats lightly down off the shelf and sets itself on the coffee table.

Quentin is staring at Eliot's casting hand, for some reason, and it actually takes him a second to notice the book. "Um," he says, then blinks, finally tearing his eyes away from Eliot's fingers. "Oh! Thanks!"

"Don't mention it," Eliot calls, already most of the way up the stairs. He just needs to get to the safety of his room, where he can hide behind his wards and not worry that any passing psychics might catch a glimpse of him speculating about just how strong Quentin is with those tattoos. Could he, say, lift Eliot up and fuck him against a wall? Just as an example. Off the top of his head.

Volume Q for Quentin Coldwater is quickly becoming its own multi-volume encyclopedia of fantasies, and Eliot's not sure how much more of this he can take.

* * *

Thanksgiving weekend arrives, whisking Quentin away to the Jersey suburbs and leaving Eliot alone with his thoughts. His thoughts, unfortunately, are one hundred percent devoted to Quentin Coldwater, the most inconveniently sexy man who ever lived and the guaranteed cause of Eliot's eventual demise. 

It's not even entirely about all of Quentin's horribly erotic augmentations over the past few weeks, though Eliot is retroactively grateful for his furtive teenaged Google searches regarding the likelihood of one's dick falling off from overuse. It sounds like some saccharine absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder-bullshit, but Eliot _misses_ Quentin. He misses seeing him sitting in a chair with one leg tucked under and the other thrown over the chair's arm, with his nose buried in a book, and the soft smile he always makes, without fail, whenever he notices Eliot. He's trapped in a neverending hell, sandwiched between wholesome friendship thoughts and debauched fuckbuddy fantasies, and he's starting to worry that the two are becoming irrevocably tangled, leaving him constantly teetering on the edge of ruining everything for good.

Just like last year, Eliot and Margo spend Thanksgiving Day indulging in takeout Chinese food, watching romcoms they both know by heart and getting wasted on Eliot's latest experiment with magical schnapps. Unlike last year, however, Eliot finds himself unable to concentrate on the plights of Drew Barrymore and her English teacher, or Anne Hathaway and her cerulean sweater, or the eight million different people in Love Actually. The cinnamon-and-peach undertones of his drink taste bitter in his mouth. He keeps looking at every leading man in every movie they watch and thinking, _that one's not as handsome. That one's hair isn't as soft. That one's ass isn't as nice_. Why, for the love of all that is holy, can he not stop _thinking_ about this ridiculous, gorgeous, sweet, innocent little straight boy who must never be allowed to know that Eliot's spent any amount of time thinking about how nice his ass is?

He thinks he's hiding his agony fairly well, but: "He's not even _here_ ," Margo snaps, smacking Eliot in the shoulder, _hard_.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Eliot slurs unconvincingly.

" _I don't know what you're talking about_ ," Margo mimics. She can get very Miranda Priestly when she's drunk, and it's not nearly as enjoyable as when Meryl Streep does it. "You keep sighing like you're a fucking Victorian princess on a fucking fainting couch. You've been watching the door more than you've been watching the screen. For fuck's sake, El, would you just fuck the boy already so you can get this out of your system and we can move on with our lives? And do _not,_ " she continues, smacking his shoulder again in the exact same spot, "start up with your _he's probably straight_ bullshit again. You don't have a pussy but you're fucking acting like one."

"Okay, first, _ow,_ " Eliot says, leaning away from her and rubbing his poor abused shoulder. "Second, I don't know what you want me to do about it? Quentin, as we have thoroughly established, is not here."

"All I'm saying," Margo says, glaring at him over the rim of her glass, "is nut up or shut up." She punctuates the sentence by downing the rest of her drink.

And, well, Eliot can drink to that, too.

Quentin doesn't return to Brakebills until Sunday night, whereupon Operation Nut Up Or Shut Up immediately commences. The trouble is that, while Eliot had spent the remainder of the weekend talking himself into the Shut Up option, all of that goes right out the window when he's confronted once again with the reality of Quentin Coldwater, unwitting casanova. His long sleeves are shoved up around his elbows when he comes into the cottage, probably due to the temperature difference between real-world November and eternally-temperate Brakebills, and Eliot's traitorous eyes are immediately drawn to the remnants of Quentin's enhancement tattoos. They're definitely fading, just like Quentin had said they would, but they're still _there,_ taunting Eliot with their eminent lickability.

And then, adding insult to injury, Stupid Sexy Quentin has the audacity to _smile at him._ "Hey, El," he says, so fucking soft. Eliot feels like he's self-immolating. "Have a good weekend?"

 _Not at all, and I think you should let me bend you over this couch immediately as consolation._ "Oh, you know," Eliot says, tipping his head back towards the ceiling as though the god he has fully forsaken will grant him strength, "just some quiet evenings in with the missus."

"Sounds relaxing. I basically spent the whole weekend doing three months of accumulated chores for my dad." Despite his complaints, Quentin sounds pleased about it, which is so wholesome that Eliot thinks his heart might explode. "Got all the lifting and Christmas decorating done before the tattoo spells started wearing off, so that was nice."

"Nice," Eliot echoes. It's bad enough he still has to see the tattoos; he certainly doesn't want to _talk_ about them.

Quentin seems to sense that Eliot would like to be done with this conversation, like right now, or even better to never have begun it at all. "Yeah," he says, his voice losing some of its enthusiasm. "Well I should, uh. I didn't get _any_ homework done, and there's this— thing. Due Tuesday, so."

Eliot's heart does explode, he's pretty sure, but he cannot figure out a way to walk back his weird detachment without admitting that if he pays Quentin any more attention right now he's going to end up shoving him up against a bookshelf and having his wicked way with him. "Good call," he says. "Let me know if you need any help," he adds, because he has absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

Quentin shuffles off upstairs, a little deflated, and Eliot feels like smacking himself in the shoulder right over the bruise Margo left there. There must be a way to take the Shut Up route and still be Quentin's friend. That's the whole goddamn _point_ of the Shut Up route. If Eliot didn't care about Quentin remaining his friend, he could just drag Quentin into his room and blow his adorable mind for a couple hours and then wash his hands of this whole sordid business. But he cares, more deeply than he'd like to admit, about keeping his nervous, gorgeous, brilliant first-year shadow. And he won't get to keep him if the only way to stave off his own lustful impulses is to act like a disinterested jerk.

Eliot can do this. Eliot can do fucking _magic_ , he can certainly act like an adult and be platonic friends with the most strangely alluring man he's ever had the misfortune of meeting. Operation Shut Up is going to work. It absolutely has to. Eliot will make it work if it kills him.

He does make it work for approximately two days until, out of nowhere, it kills him.

Generally, parties at the cottage are reserved for the weekends, but after an entire holiday weekend spent mostly alone and trying to pretend he's not pining over a straight boy, Eliot can't wait until Friday before throwing himself a distraction. He can't come up with a theme on such short notice, so he doesn't bother with one, using the lawlessness of it as an excuse to make six different types of unrelated canapes, each one theoretically matched to one of his various leftover schnapps experiments from Thanksgiving. The party doesn't have the most remarkable turnout, probably due to the fact that he's throwing a party on a fucking _Tuesday,_ but it creates enough of a crowd that he has other people and conversations to take his attention away from Quentin, who's tucked up into the corner of one of the couches with a plate of canapes beside him.

Except. Quentin keeps doing something weird with his mouth.

 _Honestly,_ Eliot shouldn't even have noticed it. He has absolutely no business looking at his friend's mouth, nor should he be so familiar with his friend's mouth that he can instantly tell when said friend is doing something weird with said mouth. However, the fact remains: Quentin's lips keep twitching, _constantly,_ and sometimes his jaw twitches too, and he seems to be doing some kind of intense mental calculation every time he puts a canape into his mouth.

What is going _on?_

Like a horribly self-aware moth drawn to a petite sweatshirt-clad flame, Eliot works his way through the party, complimenting outfits and bartering for exam answer keys until finally, inexorably, he's settling himself on the couch next to Quentin.

"What are you drinking, little Q?" he asks. He knows the answer, of course: sangria made with cranberry schnapps and candied oranges. But he waits until Quentin tells him before he waves a hand at the pitcher, sitting on a shelf across the room, and watches it carefully float over the heads of the crowd until it settles in his hand and he can top up Quentin's glass.

That done, he smiles at Quentin, who has a strange little frown creasing his forehead and the beginnings of a blush coloring his cheeks. The silence draws on just a beat longer than Eliot's expecting it to, then Quentin shakes his head abruptly. "Show-off," he says, and flashes Eliot a smile and sips his sangria.

"Always," Eliot says. "I'm a social butterfly who was deprived of an adoring audience for four entire days. I'm making up for lost time."

"You had Margo," Quentin points out. He picks up his nearly-empty plate and glares at the one remaining piece of bruschetta, then takes an extremely careful bite of it.

"Is everything okay?" Eliot asks. "You look like you're. Uncomfortable." He wiggles his fingers near his own mouth to give Quentin at least some hint of what the fuck Eliot is asking about.

"Mm," Quentin says, chewing, and shakes his head. "Mm." He swallows, then for a moment his jaw works and his lips move against each other as he frowns, eyes up towards the ceiling like he's trying to figure something out. "Okay," he says finally. "No, I'm fine. I'm just like, kind of having to re-learn how to eat normally."

Eliot eyes him, confused. "Why?"

Quentin's mouth does a strange thing again. Eliot, the hapless moth, takes a deep breath and reminds himself the flame is not there for him. He cannot have the flame. The flame will hurt him. 

And then Quentin says, "I still haven't quite gotten used to this new tongue piercing." And he opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue and _shows him_.

The flame becomes a bonfire, consuming Eliot's poor little moth self whole. He thinks the bass just dropped in the background music, which is exceedingly strange since he's pretty sure Ella Fitzgerald predates bass drops. Or possibly that's just his heartbeat? He feels like he's suddenly underwater, he can hear his breath echoing in his ears. The little barbell glints in the dim light of the party, a fat bead of silver sitting in the middle of Quentin's— Quentin's _tongue_. Which exists in Quentin's mouth, between Quentin's lips, and now there's a hard little metal sphere in there that would _drag_ up the length of—

"Why," he says. "Why. Did you get a t." He swallows hard. "A tongue piercing."

Quentin puts his tongue back in his mouth and a piece of Eliot's soul goes with it. "It's got a translation spell in it. I was having trouble with the tones in this one Vietnamese incantation, so I found this thing, you can kind of, imbue yourself with the ability to speak a language by enchanting a piece of jewelry and piercing your tongue?" He grimaces. "I'm not sure if I did the spell wrong, or if it just isn't that good, because it definitely didn't work right. I sound like bad Google Translate."

"Ah," Eliot says. "So you'll be taking it out, probably, then. Soon."

Quentin takes the one remaining emotional lifeboat that Eliot is desperately reaching for and smashes it to itty bitty smithereens. "Actually, I don't think so. It's weird to get used to, but it's already healed, because magic. And I really kind of like it."

"I repeat my question," Eliot says faintly. "Why."

Quentin lets his tongue flick out of his mouth, tapping the piercing against his teeth, frowning like he's not sure what he wants to say. Eliot's pants have never been so uncomfortably tight in the front. "It feels. I don't know, like a good way to, express myself? Be like, more visibly queer? Like, I was technically out in undergrad, but I never had the guts to do something like this. But I feel so much _better_ here, like I can actually kind of. Take risks. Like you said about experimenting, with the tattoos, before break. I want to be me, right? And this feels like _me_ , just. More clear about who _me_ is."

The words he's saying sink into Eliot's brain one by one like marbles in a bowl of molasses, slowly, slowly reaching the bottom where he can comprehend them. Express. Myself. Be. More. Visibly. _Queer—_

Eliot grabs Quentin by the back of the neck and is kissing him before he even knows what he's doing. He feels an unpleasant splash of cool liquid over the front of his shirt — Quentin's sangria — but Quentin is _melting_ in his grasp and his mouth is opening, his tongue (his _tongue_ ) running along Eliot's bottom lip.

Right about then Eliot remembers about Operation Shut Up, that thoroughly defunct and misguided attempt to avoid letting this _not straight at all_ boy know that Eliot wants to rail him six ways from Sunday. He pulls back, hoping he hasn't just ruined everything. And Quentin follows him, tips forward to keep their lips together, definitely spills more sangria on Eliot in the process. He makes an unbelievable noise against Eliot's mouth, then finally seems to run out of breath and sits back.

"Jesus," he says, staring wide-eyed at Eliot. "I guess I should've, um, explicitly come out to you earlier? If that was all it was gonna take?"

 _If that was all it was gonna take._ As though this was an isolated incident and not the culmination of a weeks long campaign of targeted strikes to Eliot's dick. "Come upstairs with me," Eliot says, his mouth now fully detached from his brain. Quentin's eyes get impossibly wider as Eliot grabs his wrist, right over the barely-visible remnants of the tattoos. Eliot nods down at his shirt, soaked through with Quentin's drink, and says in his most lascivious tones, "You've gotten me all wet."

"Fuck," Quentin breathes, color rising in his cheeks. "Okay."

Eliot's certain that his flimsy excuse isn't fooling anyone, not with the way he practically drags Quentin up the stairs, popping open the buttons on his ruined shirt and vest with his other hand. By the time they make it to Eliot's room, he's got the shirt completely open, and when he turns and casts the spell to lock his door and activate all his wards, Quentin crowds up into his space, helpfully shoving the shirt and vest off his shoulders as he stretches up to kiss him again. Eliot stumbles backwards until he reaches the bed, sits down and pulls Quentin down on top of him, hands bunched in Quentin's ugly, ill-fitting, yet still somehow wildly sexy sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt, thankfully, is not long for this world, all four of their hands scrambling at the hem of it and tugging it and the t-shirt beneath up and off. Without clothes in the way, Eliot's gaze zeroes back in on faded lines of the tattoos, and he brings one of Quentin's wrists to his mouth, tongue tracing over the swirling design. Quentin laughs, a breathless, joyous sound. "I- I guess you liked the tattoos after all?"

"Believe me," Eliot says, lips brushing Quentin's pulse point while his other hand brushes up the knobs of Quentin's spine, "I liked them _a lot._ "

"And, um, the eyeliner?" Quentin gently pulls his wrist free so he can drape both arms around Eliot's neck, settling himself more firmly in Eliot's lap. "You liked that too?"

Eliot can't help it: he laughs, a little wildly, an uncontrolled smile breaking across his face. "Quentin," he says, "are you secretly _vain?_ "

"Maybe," Quentin replies, grinning right back, "when I'm trying to get the attention of my disgustingly attractive friend whose gaydar is _completely broken._ "

Eliot reels Quentin in to kiss him. His mouth is exactly as plush as it looks, his little bit of stubble rough in contrast to the smooth heat of his lips. And he's _handsy_ , running his sturdy palms over Eliot's back, scratching through Eliot's chest hair. Eliot will need to revise a large number of entries in his encyclopedia of fantasies.

Although — maybe he doesn't really need to. Maybe the fantasies are going to be irrelevant, now, if he has the reality of Quentin in his lap, kissing him hungrily, making small delicious noises against his mouth.

"There's also this thing called _using your words_ ," Eliot says, breaking the kiss for an agonizing moment. "Maybe you've heard of it? It's all the rage."

"Sounds familiar," Quentin says, cocking his head to the side, the fucking brat. "But I dunno, is that actually what you want from me right now?" And he fucking _rolls his hips_ , pressing forward against Eliot. He's hard, Quentin Coldwater is writhing in Eliot's lap and rubbing his clothed erection against Eliot's stomach, this is not a drill.

"It really isn't, no." Eliot stands, picking Quentin up with him, using a rush of telekinesis to help lift him because this boy, though tiny, is _solid_ and surprisingly muscular and Eliot wants to lick every inch of him. Quentin clings to his shoulders and instinctively wraps his legs around Eliot's waist, Eliot's brain stuttering like a scratched record with how _fucking hot_ this is. Then he's turning and basically tossing him onto the bed, crawling over him, utterly out of control. "Because _my_ disgustingly attractive friend has been deliberately winding me up for almost a month, and I am perhaps three seconds from _losing my mind_."

This is not how Eliot imagined doing this, neither the slick seduction that is his standard nor the chivalrous courtship he'd caught himself imagining for Quentin specifically. But he _can't_ do anything else, not with Quentin shirtless and flushed under him, grabbing Eliot's waist to pull Eliot's hips down against his and gasping when he feels Eliot's erection pressing against him.

"Fuck," Quentin says, gorgeous brown eyes wide. "You— um. Are you—"

"Hung like a horse? Yes," Eliot says modestly. He ducks down to kiss the line of Quentin's neck, taste that smooth skin, graze his teeth along the hollow of Quentin's throat where that _fucking choker_ had rested. "About to fuck you so good your adorable little head is going to spin? Also yes. If that's what you want, of course," he adds belatedly. 

Quentin is already thrusting up against him, rubbing their cocks together with tiny little jerky motions. "Um," he pants. "I wasn't, I _do_ want that, like a _lot_ , but I wasn't exactly expecting this tonight? So maybe like." Eliot swirls his tongue around Quentin's nipple, and Quentin arches into him, grabbing at Eliot's hair to get his mouth exactly where he wants it. "Can I blow you instead? For now?"

Eliot sits up so abruptly Quentin looks alarmed and stops grinding against him, freezing like the sexiest deer to ever see a pair of headlights. "Can you blow me," he repeats breathlessly, not quite believing the words he's saying. Quentin's mouth is open, the little hint of silver just peeking out past his teeth. Eliot cups Quentin's face in one hand and drags his thumb along Quentin's bottom lip. "I don't know, Quentin," he says, low and sultry. "Can you?"

Quentin closes his lips and sucks, teasing the pad of Eliot's thumb with his tongue, then lifts his head a bit so he can slide his mouth down. The tongue piercing _drags_ , just like Eliot knew it would, and even though it's only dragging down his thumb he feels an answering pulse in his dick.

"Question emphatically answered," Eliot says, and starts to scramble off of Quentin to get the rest of the way naked before he embarrasses himself and ruins a perfectly fine pair of slacks. But before he can roll away, Quentin reaches out and grabs Eliot's hips with both hands, holding him in place, staring up at him with wide, pleading eyes.

"Sorry, I just," Quentin says, one hand moving from Eliot's hip to the button of his pants. "I've kind of. Thought about this a lot." And Eliot is helpless to do or say anything as Quentin's gaze shifts downward, as he opens Eliot's pants, as he pushes the fabric out of the way and pulls out Eliot's cock.

"Do—" Eliot's voice catches and he has to try again. "Do you like what you see?"

The question is redundant, because it's completely fucking obvious: Quentin is staring at Eliot's dick like a starving man at a Vegas-style buffet, which completely obliterates any lingering doubts Eliot might've had about Quentin's sexuality, _holy shit._ "Jesus Christ, Eliot," Quentin says breathlessly, and Eliot doesn't have time to preen before Quentin is shoving Eliot back, _hard,_ so that their positions are reversed, Eliot on his back with his head at the foot of the bed and Quentin hovering over him, tugging Eliot's pants the rest of the way off with absolutely zero finesse and then practically _diving_ onto Eliot's cock.

As soon as Quentin's perfect lips close around the head of his cock, Eliot feels like he's ascended to another plane of existence. He also feels like the biggest idiot ever, because not only is Quentin Coldwater not remotely straight, he's clearly an extremely practiced sucker of dick. His mouth is so warm and wet, and he keeps _doing things_ with the tip of his tongue, and when Eliot nearly loses control and thrusts up into his mouth Quentin immediately plants his hand on Eliot's hip. Like he fucking _knows_ how much he's driving Eliot crazy. "Quentin, oh my god, you—"

Quentin tips his head up, letting Eliot's cock fall out of his mouth, and breathily informs him, "You should pull my hair, I like it," before sliding back down.

And, despite the fact that it was the ignition switch of this entire mindblowing situation, Eliot had somehow managed to _forget about the tongue ring._

" _Quentin,_ " Eliot whines as he tries to arch up into it, restrained by the hard press of Quentin's palm. It's not the first time a guy with a piercing has gone down on Eliot, but it's the first time someone has done it with this level of skill and enthusiasm. It _drags_ as Quentin moves his mouth, sending sparks up Eliot's spine, and Eliot makes a completely embarrassing noise as he grabs Quentin by the hair and yanks him off.

"Sorry," Quentin says sheepishly, letting go of Eliot's dick so he can wipe his mouth on the back of his hand. "I, uh, obviously haven't done this with the piercing before, so I'm not sure. Um. Was it weird? Bad?"

"Not a single fucking thing about you is bad," Eliot tells him. Quentin blushes, which is unbelievably sexy with both of Eliot's hands wound up in Quentin's hair. "But I'd rather that your first impression of me, sexually speaking, does not involve me coming in ten seconds flat."

Quentin's eyes keep flickering between Eliot's face and Eliot's cock, like he can't decide which one is better to look at. "So it felt good? The tongue ring?"

"So fucking vain," Eliot mutters, pulling Quentin up by the hair so he can kiss him, open-mouthed and dirty, tasting himself on Quentin's tongue.

From this position it's so easy to slide his hands down to Quentin's perfect round ass and discover that, just like he's imagined about a billion times, it fits in his palms like Quentin was made for him. He squeezes — just a little, he doesn't want Quentin to think he's trying to push the boundaries they already set for tonight, but he has to _feel_ it. Quentin makes a breathless noise into his mouth and shoves his ass back into Eliot's grip, and Eliot grabs harder. His brilliant plan of making out for a minute to get himself back away from the edge is not precisely working as he'd hoped. Not with Quentin's tongue in his mouth, his hands roaming all over Eliot's body, that absurdly fuckable ass flexing under those stupid jeans.

Speaking of, time for those to go. Eliot hooks a leg around Quentin and rolls them over so he's on top again. He finds a particularly excellent spot on Quentin's neck, just below his jaw, that makes Quentin _whine_ when Eliot bites and sucks at it, keeping Quentin distracted enough for just a second to undo his jeans and start to shove them down. Quentin lifts his hips obligingly, and Eliot's hands run over—

"What the fuck," Eliot says, struggling not to burst into hysterically aroused laughter. He sits up. Instead of the plaid boxers or plain cotton briefs he was expecting, Quentin's wearing— Jesus fucking Christ. He's wearing a fucking _thong_ made of sheer black fabric, silky-soft and straining as it attempts to contain his hard dick. "Wasn't expecting this tonight my _ass_. Coldwater, you fucking tease."

"Huh?" Quentin says. His eyes are half glazed over with arousal. Who knew it was possible for confused-but-also-exceptionally-turned-on to be that cute? "Oh, no, I didn't, uh— that's not on purpose, I just—"

"Not on purpose," Eliot scoffs. He ducks down, kissing the scatter of chest hair across Quentin's pecs, continuing down over the plane of Quentin's stomach. "Okay. What kind of spell is on these, then? Something to keep your pants from falling down—" He licks the curve of Quentin's hipbone. "—so you don't have to wear a belt and can torment me with the implication that you might be going commando?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Quentin says, and he sounds so genuinely baffled that Eliot almost believes him. "I just like these, I wear them a lot. They're comfy."

Eliot, having reached his destination, kisses Quentin's dick through the fabric. Quentin moans beautifully. "Keep your secrets, then," Eliot says. He runs his tongue over Quentin's dick, wetting the sheer material, making it cling even tighter to the curve of Quentin's shaft. "Just don't stop wearing these."

"Fuck, definitely not gonna," Quentin gasps. His fingers curl into Eliot's hair as Eliot teases him. He's particularly sensitive just under the head of his cock, it turns out, and he makes a strangled noise and jerks his hips up when Eliot massages the spot with the tip of his tongue. "Eliot, fucking, please fucking— do _something_ , fuck."

The _please_ flips a switch somewhere in Eliot's brain, and when he takes his mouth off Quentin's dick and speaks, his voice comes out low and commanding. "Not yet," he says. Quentin makes a noise like Eliot's stolen part of his soul, pained and needy. "You've been intentionally turning me on for weeks now. I can't tell you how many times I've been in this room, jerking myself off, thinking about your face, or your mouth, or your neck, or your fucking _arms_." He punctuates his little monologue with short licks to Quentin's cock, enough to get him shaking under Eliot's tongue but not enough to really go anywhere yet. "And that's not even mentioning all the times I've come thinking about your dick, or your ass. I think it may number in the hundreds, all told."

Quentin is looking at him with desperate hunger in his face, open-mouthed and panting, those beautiful brown eyes blown dark. Good. Let him suffer as Eliot has suffered. "So you'll forgive me," Eliot continues, in that deep velvet tone that makes it clear Quentin's forgiveness is not actually necessary, "if I don't have a ton of sympathy for you now that I finally have a chance to tease you _back_."

He licks a broad stripe up Quentin's cock, and when he reaches the head, swirling his tongue around it through the fabric of Quentin's underwear, he can taste the sharp-salty flavor of precome. Quentin's dick is so hard he's leaking, his muscles are tense and jumping with the effort of not shoving up into Eliot's face— and Eliot may be a show-off, may love to put his partners right on the edge before he finally gives them what they want, but he's not _cruel_. He's not _Quentin._

So he finally peels Quentin's thong down and swallows his dick, sucking with deep strokes that have Quentin crying out wordlessly.

It feels almost unreal, to actually have Quentin laid out under him like this, after weeks, _months_ of convincing himself that it was impossible. But it has to be real, because in all of Eliot's endless fantasies he'd never imagined that Quentin would be this _noisy._ There's sound coming out of his mouth constantly, little whimpers and moans and _yes_ and _Eliot,_ absolute and utter nonsense until he somehow manages to regain enough composure to string together an entire sentence. "I— I thought I was supposed to be blowing you?"

Eliot raises his head, licking a stripe up the underside of Quentin's cock as he goes, eliciting yet another delicious noise. "Would you like to lodge a complaint?"

"No," Quentin says, the word catching in his throat as Eliot idly teases him with the tip of his tongue. "I mean, _yes._ I mean— Jesus, would you stop that for a second?" Eliot grins and pulls back, letting himself enjoy the full tableau of Quentin Coldwater, naked and flushed and panting on Eliot's bed. "This is just like. Not what I'd imagined."

"Oh?" Eliot, apparently unable to restrain himself now that he knows there was no need to restrain himself in the first place, licks his own thumb before reaching up to drag it around one of Quentin's nipples. "And what exactly did you imagine?"

"Um." Quentin arches up into Eliot's touch, his forehead creasing in the cutest little needy frown as Eliot teases at his nipple. "I guess I thought I'd have to, like. Convince you more? Prove that I could— _nn_ — make it good. Worth your time."

"What was your plan for that?" Eliot folds himself in half to kiss Quentin's inner thigh, scrapes his teeth a little against the tender skin. He looks up briefly. "Just to be clear, I do not need any convincing, and you are absolutely worth my time." He goes back to his task of lavishing attention on Quentin's thighs, his pelvis, his lower belly, slowly working his way up. "But I'd love to hear what _moves_ you were planning to put on me to win me over."

"I guess uh, mostly just sucking your dick?" Quentin pushes up against Eliot's firm grip on his hips. "I was planning to deepthroat it, but, uh." He laughs a little, kind of craning his neck to get a look around Eliot's head at his cock, swinging hard and huge between Eliot's thighs. "I think I'll need some practice."

Eliot would drop out of every single one of his classes in a heartbeat to accommodate practice sessions with Quentin's perfect mouth. "That could be arranged," he says, keeping the depths of his desperation to himself, thank you very much. "And what did you want me to do for you?"

"Well, that was the problem," Quentin says. "I couldn't decide — half the time when I was jerking off about it, I wanted you to come down my throat." Eliot bites a little harder than he means to, hearing that, but Quentin whimpers in a happy way, not a get-your-teeth-out-of-my-ribs way. Interesting. "And then the other half I wanted to stop before you came so you could fuck me."

Eliot finishes sucking one of Quentin's nipples to a blood-flushed peak and moves over to the other one. "How? Where?"

"Fuck— you name it." Quentin laughs again. Eliot is rapidly becoming obsessed with this breathless little mid-sex laugh of his, the way it tapers off into a groan when Eliot gets his teeth into the swell of Quentin's pec. "Just depended on the fantasy. From behind in my bed. Letting me ride you in your bed, since your headboard is easier to grab onto. Bent over the back of a couch in the common room. Holding me in the air with telekinesis. Up against the fucking Brakebills sign—"

As little as Eliot would like this absurdly erotic to-do list to stop, he's reached Quentin's mouth now, and nothing in the world is as important as kissing those soft pink lips. Quentin's gotten impossibly hungrier for it, wrapping his legs around Eliot's hips, tongue fucking into Eliot's mouth, the hard sphere of his piercing grazing Eliot's tongue. Eliot's pretty sure he could spend all night right here, making out with a horny and enthusiastic Quentin Coldwater, and not get bored for a second. But the man made a request, and Eliot's determined to honor it. 

"We'll go with option A for tonight," he says, pressing Quentin's shoulders down into the bed so he can actually get his mouth free long enough to speak. "Me coming down your throat. Or wherever in your mouth I'll actually fit, I suppose." Quentin whimpers. "Save option B for another time."

"Options B through Z," Quentin clarifies, as Eliot rolls off of him. "There are a lot of ways I want to get your dick in me."

"We'll be very thorough," Eliot assures him. He takes the opportunity to reorient their positions, making a show of fluffing up his pillows before lying back on them indulgently. "But for now, I believe there was something you were interested in?"

" _Been_ interested in," Quentin says, settling between Eliot's legs, his expression turned hungry again, "but _I'm_ not the one who can't take a hint." Before Eliot can even think about informing Quentin that he's being an insufferable brat, he ducks down and takes a truly impressive amount of Eliot's dick into his mouth, and Eliot kind of forgets how to make words for a minute.

Between Quentin's obviously considerable cocksucking skills and the added stimulation of his piercing — not to mention the fact that, despite his implication to the contrary, Quentin is really making his best attempt towards deepthroating — Eliot is right back on the edge in practically no time at all. The head of his cock is rubbing rhythmically across Quentin's soft palette, the piercing is tracing arcane patterns across the underside, this criminally sexy man keeps making _noises_ like he'd still be moaning Eliot's name if only his mouth weren't crammed full of Eliot's dick, and _oh fuck_ — 

Eliot's been embarrassed enough this evening, he doesn't need to add poor blowjob etiquette to his list of sins. "Quentin— Q—" he whines, trying to make the imminent situation clear without the use of most of his advanced brain functions. Quentin, apparently getting the hint, stares up at him with his blown-wide eyes and reaches wildly for Eliot's wrists so he can place Eliot's hands back on either side of his head, and Eliot clings tightly to Quentin's hair as he comes, as requested, down Quentin's throat.

"Fuck," he gasps, chest heaving, as Quentin licks him clean, the piercing making Eliot shudder as it trails across oversensitive skin. "Fuck. Jesus."

"No, it's Quentin," Quentin says with the biggest fucking shit-eating grin. God, this _brat_. Eliot's going to have to throw out his whole catalog of fantasies and start from scratch. Quentin Coldwater is not the blushing virgin Eliot imagined him to be, he's not an _unwitting_ casanova, he's a fucking sex kitten. Eliot's world is upside down.

Well. Eliot at least has some modicum of control over his own actions. So he pulls Quentin up into his lap to kiss him deeply, fitting his palm over the back of Quentin's neck and getting his other hand, still mildly shaking, around Quentin's dick. He hadn't even taken the time to admire it earlier, totally thrown off-script by that absurd sheer thong. Fortunately, Quentin is apparently so overcome by Eliot's half-decent handjob that he breaks off the kiss, moaning brokenly against Eliot's cheek, and Eliot has the opportunity to look down. It's as fucking beautiful as the rest of him, the head flushed pink, the shaft thick and twitching-hard in Eliot's hand.

"Where would you like to come for me?" Eliot asks, finally pulling some semblance of his usual smoothness out of thin air. "On my chest? In my mouth?" 

"Chest," Quentin says, and fuck, his voice is hoarse in that telltale just-blew-someone-huge way. "Wanna, want you to see how much I want you, _El, fuck_ —"

Eliot does a quick one-handed tut to conjure some lube, upgrading this handjob from half-decent to closer to Eliot's standard. "Oh, I see it," he murmurs. Quentin shudders and squirms closer. His ass is pressing against Eliot's spent dick, and his legs are spread _very_ nicely over Eliot's thighs. "It took me a while to catch on—"

" _That's_ an understatement."

Eliot nips at the side of Quentin's neck to shut him up. It doesn't exactly work, but desperate mewling is better than sass. "But now that I have," he continues, "and I can see how hot you are for me, rest assured we are going to try out every single way you dreamed up for me to put my thick fucking cock inside you—"

" _Yes, fuck_ —"

"—and then we'll start working through everything _I_ thought up. Get my tongue in your ass and lick you open until you're begging for it. Put those fucking tattoos back on you and have you fuck me up against a wall. Take you to Ibiza with me, lay you out on the beach where the sand is enchanted not to get anywhere you don't want it and fuck you so good we levitate—"

"Eliot I'm _nnghfuck_ —" Quentin groans, thrusting frantically into Eliot's fist. Eliot hates to lean away from him, but he has to see this, Quentin flushed all the way down his chest and hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and abs twitching, nipples hard, thighs tensing, dick shining wet with lube and precome and _there_ he goes, shooting over Eliot's chest and yelling like he's dying.

Eliot has devoted more time and effort to imagining what it looks like when Quentin comes than he has to all the classes he's taken at Brakebills combined, and the reality still makes his fantasies pale in comparison.

Quentin is _wrecked_ as Eliot finishes stroking him through it, panting and moaning into Eliot's shoulder where he's collapsed forward, a sweaty boneless mess of tousled hair and raw sex appeal. Eliot just enjoys this new universe he's unexpectedly found himself in, where Quentin Coldwater just sucked his cock and then came screaming in his arms. He strokes the small of Quentin's back, feeling both of their heartbeats slowly returning to a normal rhythm.

When Quentin's finally recovered enough to sit up, Eliot quickly does his usual clean-up spell, magically wiping away the mess on his chest before it can get crusty. Quentin's eyes widen.

"There's a spell for that?" he asks.

"Of course there's a spell for that," Eliot says, bemused. "Sex was probably the second thing anyone ever used magic for after magic was invented. There's a spell for everything. Actually," he says, suddenly realizing he was a complete sex-crazed idiot, "there's a couple of spells for anal prep that make it so you don't need a shower beforehand, the magic takes care of everything. If that's what you were concerned about."

"Seriously?" Quentin groans. "I wish you'd told me that earlier. Is there a spell to get your dick hard again right now so you can fuck me?"

"If there is, I've never needed it," Eliot says haughtily. "Give me ten minutes. Unless you had other plans this evening you need to get back to?"

"I might have," Quentin says. He leans in slowly, and Eliot's eyes flutter shut in anticipation. "Whatever they were, I don't fucking care anymore."

They kiss lazily. With the edge taken off Eliot's weeks-long backlog of desperation, he really has time to explore, learn just how fucking good Quentin is at everything involving his mouth. Eliot has never been so wrong about anything in his life as he was in his assumptions about Quentin Coldwater, but he'll gladly label himself an ass now that it means he gets to touch Quentin's with impunity.

"You know," Eliot says eventually, fingertips idly playing over the curve of Quentin's throat, "in your fit of vanity, you never asked me if I liked the choker."

Eliot can feel the vibration of the pleased hum that Quentin makes, like a contented cat. "I didn't need to. Margo told me how much you liked it."

Wait, what? Eliot moves his hand to curl around the back of Quentin's neck, for stability more than anything else. " _Margo_ told you that?"

"Uh, yeah," Quentin says, his forehead wrinkling up in confusion. "When she was helping me with that Russian spell. She said, um. _Hope you realize your prescription dog collar is going to take up permanent residence in El's spank bank._ " Quentin's impression of Margo is surprisingly good, but Eliot's too stunned to properly appreciate it. When Eliot doesn't respond right away, Quentin rolls his eyes. "Okay, seriously? Even if she and I hadn't talked about it, _my pillow is poking me in the ribs_ isn't exactly subtle."

 _Tell him you want to chain his collar to your bed. Just fuck the boy already. All I'm saying is nut up or shut up._ "Oh my god," Eliot says, burying his face in Quentin's shoulder. "Was she in on this the whole time? Was this some kind of coordinated assault of bisexual solidarity?"

Quentin laughs, which doesn't particularly make Eliot feel better, but the gentle motion of Quentin's fingers in Eliot's hair helps a bit. "Actually, um. She might've also said the phrase _use your words_ to me, so. Uh."

"Bambi is very wise," Eliot says, stretching up to kiss Quentin's jaw, just because he _can,_ "and we would do best to remember that."

"Yeah." Quentin leans happily into Eliot's touch. "So, um. Has it been ten minutes yet?"

"Oh my _god_ ," Eliot groans. And yes, it has, his body is very sure it has. "I thought _not_ being able to fuck you was going to kill me. I never anticipated I might die of fucking you _too much_."

"Yeah," Quentin says, "but what a way to go." 


End file.
